Historically, TV receivers were mainly only compliant to analog terrestrial TV standards such as PAL, SECAM (in Europe, China, India, S-E Asia, Brazil, etc.) or NTSC (in North America, Korea, Taiwan and Japan). With the deployment of digital TV (DTV) all over the world, and with analog TV switch-off already occurring in some countries or planned for the early 2010's, TV makers are embedding in their TV chassis additional front-end systems to receive various digital TV standards. These multiple front ends are typically by way of multiple dedicated separate tuners/demodulators each for a given DTV standard, and each realized either by way of discrete components or via an integrated circuit (IC).
This is so, as TV front-ends ought to be capable of receiving terrestrial digital TV, and digital TV distributed over cable and satellite networks, so that the consumer can select any distribution network to receive his favorite programs. At the same time, digital TV standards are, for some standards (satellite mainly), already a bit “old fashioned” and second generation standards have been created and are already being deployed in the field. Those standards can offer higher bit rates, allowing HDTV programs to be more easily broadcasted. This is already the case for the satellite distribution with the evolution of DVB-S to the DVB-S2 standard, while second generation standards such as DVB-T2 (for terrestrial) and DVB-C2 (for cable) have just passed through the ETSI standardization, and are just starting to be deployed or in the phase of testing in a few countries. The diversity of all these standards can significantly increase the cost and complexity of a mid-range/high-end TV chassis that aims to be fully “digital compliant,” while at the same time the retail market is always lowering retail prices.